Fort Lauderdale’s Flagler Village Now Becoming a True ‘Live, Work, Play’ Destination

FORT LAUDERDALE—Native Realty’s Jaime Sturgis believes the future of Fort Lauderdale and particularly its emerging Flagler Village is bright due to heightened demand from investors and developers that realized the district needed more than just new high-rise multifamily projects to succeed.

The 30-year-old native of Fort Lauderdale formerly worked with Miami brokerage Metro 1 and brokered retail deals in Miami’s Wynwood section. However, two years ago, he went back to his roots and founded Native Realty in 2017 and established offices in the emerging Flagler Village district and has concentrated his efforts on Fort Lauderdale.

He said that after graduating Florida State University, Sturgis told Globest.com that he constantly saw his classmates and friends relocate to Miami, New York, Los Angeles and other major markets across the country. He said the migration to other markets was simply due to the lack of arts, culture and entertainment in the area.

During his real estate career, and particularly since forming Native Realty, Sturgis said his focus has been on “trying to learn how to attract those brands… We focused on bringing all of those components back to Fort Lauderdale.”

Flagler Village, a former neglected warehouse and residential district in Downtown Fort Lauderdale, is a case study of how an area’s resurgence can be tied to the arts, culture and entertainment, similar to what happened earlier in the Wynwood section of Miami.

Flagler Village’s rebirth began in the 2000s, but its economic resurgence truly began three to five years ago as major multifamily developers such as Lennar, Related, Alta and others began to invest and build new projects in Flagler Village. However, what Sturgis saw at the time was an imbalance, noting that what the market was missing was the underlying retail and creative office space to support such ventures.

“The mantra of the neighborhood is ‘live, work, play’ but what we were finding was there was only ‘live,’” Sturgis said.

He continued, “Nobody thought that it would work. Nobody thought that retail would come in. Nobody thought that they would pay the rents to justify the returns (on investment).”

However, the attraction of quality retailers to properties such as Flagler Uptown and others, have brought new energy and investment to the district. In fact, Flagler Village, located just north of Las Olas Boulevard and downtown Fort Lauderdale, is now being viewed more and more by investors and residents as an ideal place to live, work, and play. Developers, artists and residents have now transformed the neighborhood, city blocks at a time, into a section of the city that is becoming known for its art districts, residential developments and restaurants.

Native Realty recently brokered the $13.25-million sale of two properties it developed—the Hive and Flagler Uptown—to Tricera Capital of Miami in what Sturgis said were record-setting deals for properties in the Flagler Village District. Flagler Uptown is an 18,000-square-foot repurposed former warehouse, while the Hive totals 15,000 square feet. Native Realty has brought new eclectic tenants that are popular with millennials to Flagler Uptown, including Invasive Species Brewing, Wells Coffee and Monte Swim, a local swimwear company. The Hive is a micro-retail-office property that Native Realty successfully leased to a combination of restaurants, bars, yoga establishments as well as to creative office tenants.

Sturgis said that of late owners of former industrial and warehouse properties are undertaking adaptive reuse projects to take advantage of the changing market in the Flagler Village District.

Native Realty is now representing ArchCo Residential, LLC of Atlanta and partner Blue Rock Real Estate of New York City in leasing the retail component of their Motif mixed-use development currently under construction in Flagler Village. The 385-unit multifamily project will feature approximately 25,000 square feet of ground floor retail space.

Despite the wave of new multifamily projects that have been built or are under construction in Flagler Village, Sturgis said the Motif project is the first true mixed-use development that will feature a significant amount of retail space.

Sturgis said the recent sale of the Hive and Flagler Uptown as well as the continued investment by major developers in new projects in the district “are a testament to the success of the retailers in this neighborhood. It shows that people are taking notice, even large institutional multifamily developers are understanding the need to truly embrace the live, work, play mentality,” he said.